condition, he would be an easy target. As for the rear of the property, it was now overgrown with brambles at the north-east corner. That left only the roofs.
The gently sloping ridges and troughs of terracotta tiles had been familiar territory to him in his teens, but even then he had never ventured there after sunset, in misty late autumn, with a throbbing ankle and a killer ready to shoot him down the moment he presented a silhouette against the dying light. The tiles were slippery with moss and dead leaves, many were missing and all were loose. In one spot, the roof of the wagon shed had collapsed entirely, leaving a gaping hole. It took more time than he had ever imagined to crawl and hobble round to the hay loft on the southern side of the complex. If his memory served, there was an elm somewhere about there which jutted out over the roof. He wasn’t looking forward to shinning down it, but there was no alternative, and at least he would be in complete cover the whole time.
By now the light had almost completely gone, and he was still searching in vain for the remembered overhanging bough when the roof gave way beneath him. It was a gradual process lasting perhaps ten seconds: a gentle crack, a slow subsidence like sinking into a pile of pillows, then a deafening series of detonations and a terrifyingly quick descent.
‘Gabriele!’
Alberto’s booming tones recalled him to the realities of the situation. He was aching, but otherwise uninjured. The fall had been short, ending on a mound of festering hay. He was inside the raised and open loft, lying on top of the section of collapsed roof. The only exit was over the side giving on to the courtyard. Then he heard the scrape of a ladder being lift¬ ed off its metal hook and placed against the wall.
So prone to lethargy and despair in his everyday life, Gabriele showed no symptom of either now. His first thought was to fling one of the fallen tiles at his enemy the moment his head cleared the edge of the floor. Then he had an even better idea.
Alberto’s torch and gun appeared before he did, the former’s cold barrel of compressed light scouting out the space before coming to rest on the freshly-fallen tiles and timbers lying on the hay. Its owner climbed up the remaining rungs of the ladder and stepped out on to the brickwork paving.
‘Gabriele?’
There was no sound at all. Alberto walked over to the debris and inspected it with his torch, then turned and shone the powerful beam all around the floor of the loft. Then he started to search the space more carefully, pistol at the ready, obviously suspecting that his quarry was hiding under or behind one of the many pieces of agricultural detritus that littered the barn.
Perched on the main roof-beam above, Gabriele awaited his moment, gripped the knotted climbing rope as he had so many times in the past while playing the game that he and his brother had called ‘flying skittles’. As Alberto returned towards the centre of the floor after overturning two casks and a wooden wheelbarrow, Gabriele launched himself into space, hurtling down and then twisting at the last moment on the rope to ram his uninjured foot into Alberto’s back.
It was then that everything went out of control. Gabriele’s intention had simply been to disarm and subdue his opponent, but Alberto rolled over and slipped into the botola, the aperture designed for pushing hay down to the cattle in the byre below. For a moment his fingers clung desperately to the slimy brickwork, but there was not sufficient purchase and Gabriele could not reach him in time. There was a dull thump from below, then a scream that went on and on.
A moment later, Gabriele heard another voice in the courtyard. So Alberto had brought back-up after all. He picked up the pistol and torch, but privately he acknowledged defeat. He would go down fighting, but he had exhausted his stock of feints and dodges and had no illusions about the final outcome.
XIX
‘Gabriele Passarini!’
There was a long silence, broken only by a monotonous series of muffled bellows, as of an animal in pain, emanating from the shed below the loft. But how could there be an animal there? The farm had been abandoned for decades.
Zen did not speak further, nor did he move. He just maintained his position at the centre of the former threshing floor, amid the weeds poking up between the paving slabs, as silent and immobile as the harmless if slightly dull statue in a town piazza.
At long length, a voice sounded out from inside the hay loft.
‘Who are you?’
‘You are Passarini?’
Another pause, interspersed by the dull howls of a third voice.
‘Help me, Gabriele! My leg is broken!’
A torch beam shot out like a flick-knife, transfixing Zen.
‘Drop your weapon on the ground and move away from it,’ the man above said.
‘I am not armed. We need to talk. I have no intention of harming you.’
A brief, caustic laugh.
‘Just what Alberto said! You people from the servizi would lie to your mothers about your own name and the date of your birthday.’
‘Please, Gabriele!’ cried the other voice. ‘All right, you won. Now I’m a battlefield casualty. Despite everything, we used to be comrades in arms. By your honour as a soldier, call an ambulance, for the love of God!’
Zen abandoned his imaginary plinth, switched on his torch and strode over to the shed from which these pleas were coming. He finally made out the ancient wooden door and pulled it open. Inside, the darkness was as absolute as in the military tunnels he had explored with Anton Redel. Once again, the torch acted as the presiding deity.
An overwhelming stench of damp mingled with lingering bovine odours and the acoustics of a crypt in which continual whimpers and moans reverberated like a choir of the damned. The building was all of brick. The floor was a tight herringbone pattern, while the vaulted ceiling strengthened the ecclesiastical analogy. The design was at once sturdy, graceful and perfectly proportioned, only this was not a church but a cowshed. They did ugly things in those days too, Zen thought, but they didn’t make ugly things. They just didn’t know how.
‘Over here, Gabriele!’
The swirling echoes cancelled out any directional help that the voice had intended to give, but the torch beam soon picked out the crumpled form lying supine on the flooring in the centre of the hall about five metres away.
‘Call an ambulance! Do you have a mobile? Use mine if not. You wouldn’t want my death on your conscience as well, would you? We’ll just forget what’s happened here. Enough is enough. No more deaths.’
Zen walked towards and then around the man, keeping the torch fixed on his head and face.
‘Gabriele?’ the man asked wonderingly.
‘No, not Gabriele.’
The man lay breathing rapidly and shallowly. His right leg was twisted forward some thirty degrees at the knee. There was blood on his face and hands and on the brick flooring.
Zen transferred the torch to his left hand, knelt down and started to frisk the man’s pockets with his right. The position was awkward, the light source too close to the subject, and he didn’t see the knife until it was curving up towards his throat. But his attacker was hampered in his movements and Zen was able to roll away in time to avoid the blade. Neither man spoke. Zen stood up and kicked the hand holding the knife, which clattered away into one of the cow stalls. He retrieved it, retracted the blade and placed it in his pocket. Then he resumed his search. Having collected all the contents of the man’s jacket and coat pockets, he stood examining them by the light of the torch. As he was doing so, another source of light made its presence felt as Gabriele Passarini made his way towards them, moving in the oddly aggressive manner of people with a limp. He still had the torch in one hand and the pistol in the other.
‘What was I supposed to do?’ Passarini asked, as if talking to himself. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt him. I just
